2023-05-06 05:30:00
The supply of drugs everywhere faces uncertainty of a rare intensity. At the beginning of April, for example, an alert was launched concerning injectable aspirin, necessary in an emergency situation with suspicion of infarction or stroke. It was necessary to give priority to the oral form of the drug as much as possible, the reserve stock being exhausted. In most hospitals, specific coordination made it possible to collect and ration light bulbs scattered throughout the departments. Since then, the situation has relaxed, the product is available on a quota basis. However, uncertainty persists on many products.
I have been taking medication for forty years. A cheap antiepileptic that no one is interested in. I wonder what would become of my life if this one was no longer available. The situation puts patients at risk. It forces respect for the nursing staff and, in particular here, for the pharmacy services. The quest for alternatives to manage shortages is a daily struggle.
And what do the manufacturers say? They are asking for an increase in prices, especially for generics, which are particularly exposed to the risk of shortages. The underlying argument is that by being little, or even unprofitable, they are less attractive to produce. However, when it is pointed out to them that generics in Switzerland cost two to four times as much as in the rest of the world, they respond with a sophistry: “If they were cheaper, the shortage would be worse!” Except that the situation here is in every way similar to what we see in France or Germany: no better or worse, but more expensive.
The argument takes the pretext of scarcity to support a trade claim. The tensions are primarily due to disruptions in the production and supply chain in Asia (mainly China) where the manufacture of most active ingredients has been relocated. Manufacturers will say that these relocations are a response to demand for lower prices. They also aim to optimize their margin, of which we do not know much. Scarcity therefore has its winners and losers.
To stop the shortage, or at least control it, in the long term, the production chains should be relocated and multiplied: Switzerland cannot carry out this complex project alone. She needs Europe. In the short term, there are solutions that the FRC is promoting with BEUC (the European consumer umbrella) but also with pharmacists’ associations: expanding the list of products for which a shortage announcement is mandatory and notifying them for at least six months in advance. Currently, federal law gives manufacturers five days to notify a shortage in a restricted product list from the time it becomes known. Reserve stocks of drugs deemed essential should be increased and the stock analysis carried out more precisely by communicating delivery capacities several months in advance. Although the Confederation has created a task force, initiatives – valid and necessary – are taken locally. The HUG have, for example, created a partnership with private pharmacies. They should be taken across the country.
These measures require the mobilization of manufacturers, to whom we could grant certain concessions if and only if they fully played the game: putting the general interest into their accounting concerns. Because drugs are not like other goods and at the end of the supply chain are us, the patients.
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– Medicines: countering the shortage with manufacturers
Sophie Michaud Gigon – National Councilor (Les Verts/VD), General Secretary of the FRC